Streaming media systems are being used to transmit video and audio content over the Internet and other communication networks to devices that output the content for rendering by a user. Adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming is a streaming technology that is rapidly being adopted for commercial real-time distribution of video and other media assets and is a technique used in streaming multimedia over computer networks. While in the past video streaming technologies often utilized streaming protocols such as the real-time transport protocol (RTP) with real-time streaming protocol (RTSP), today's adaptive streaming technologies are largely based on the hypertext transport protocol (HTTP) and are designed to work efficiently over large distributed HTTP networks such as the Internet.
It is commonplace to stream media assets that have been pre-encrypted to ensure that only the intended recipient or recipients are able to render the streaming media. Such pre-encrypted content is made available to users in a variety of contexts including, for example, on-demand contexts such as during a video-on-demand (VOD) session.
Streaming technologies provide users with nearly immediate access to a wide range of content, virtually whenever they want it. Despite these potential advantages offered by streaming technologies, there is often a delay between the time a user requests a streaming media asset and the time when a pre-encrypted media asset actually begins to be rendered. This delay may be caused by any of a variety of transactions that may be required to authorize the user and/or the user's device. These transactions may require the user to participate in such things as registration, log-in and payment processes, for example.